


so many things that i wish you knew (so many walls up i can't break through)

by bechloehuh



Series: bemily week 2018 [2]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14004552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/bechloehuh
Summary: She writes different pieces of herself into her songs every time she spends time with Beca, until eventually she’s living and breathing the lyrics that she hopes one day she’ll find the courage to sing to her.(Day 7 of bemily week.)





	so many things that i wish you knew (so many walls up i can't break through)

 

There are a lot of things that Emily Junk doesn’t understand.

Taxes, the offside rule in soccer, why different countries have different spellings for the same word, poker, David Lynch movies. Really, the list goes on and on, but one thing Emily is certain of is that Beca Mitchell is at the very top of that list.

Emily likes to think of herself as a people person. She has a lot of friends, and the Bellas warmed up to her really quickly (except Amy, she’s still sort of trying to figure out whether Amy is joking when she roasts Emily or if she truly does want her dead.)

She still keeps in touch with the friends she went to high school with, and she always makes sure to smile at people when she passes them on the street. Beca tells her that’s a surefire way to get herself killed, but Emily doesn’t listen. She can’t imagine _not_ starting up a conversation with the coffee shop barista about the weather while she’s waiting for her usual coffee order before class, or not letting her classmates copy her lecture notes when they were too sick to make it in the previous day, or making friends with the person she’s sitting beside at the bus stop. She can’t imagine not being a _nice_ person.

Beca Mitchell works in a way that Emily’s never seen before, in that she’s the complete opposite of Emily.

It’s a rarity that Beca goes out in public without her headphones, so much so that one Wednesday when Emily saw her without them, she was too scared to approach her; worried that maybe Beca forgot her headphones by accident meaning she was in a terrible mood and didn’t want to be bothered.

(She knows it’s _dumb_ to be scared of Beca because technically Beca is her friend, but she likes to keep her distance just in case, which is a first for her.)

Beca blocks the world out, and doesn’t smile at anybody in public unless they’re her friend - so unless they’re Jesse or one of the Bellas - and even then, it’s less of a smile and more of a tug at the corner of her lips to show you that she’s acknowledged you. One time, Beca threw a wave to Emily when she passed her on the way to class, and if it happened to make Emily’s day a hundred times better, she’ll never admit it.

Beca likes to be alone. She makes up - in Emily’s personal opinion - _terrible_ excuses to get out of spending time with the Bellas; she’ll have a paper due, or she has to finish the setlist, or she’s having dinner with her dad, or she’s helping Jesse put up his new IKEA shelf. Emily’s new to the Bellas though, so she doesn’t outwardly question why Beca doesn’t tag along with them when they go to the movies, or the aquarium, or the new photography museum that opened up downtown.

Still, despite Beca being Emily’s complete opposite - broody and distant and, in general, kind of rude - there’s something about her that’s intriguing. Something that Emily can’t quite put her finger on just yet, which is why she makes it her personal mission to get to know Beca a little more.

(She makes a _‘things-to-find-out-about-Beca’_ list and everything.)

/

The first thing she finds out about Beca is that her birthday is on November fifth.

It’s a complete accident that she found out, but she ticks that off of her list, opens up her computer, and looks through Amazon for a gift that Beca might like.

The Bellas throw a surprise party for Beca, but judging by the look on her face when she walks into the Bella house to banners and balloons and alcohol - along with nine other girls screaming “HAPPY BIRTHDAY BECA!” - Emily guesses that maybe Beca was _expecting_ this.

Still, Beca has the decency to thank everybody, and that night Emily sees what Beca is like wasted for the first time. She’s much more smiley and less closed-off, and she dances with Chloe and Cynthia Rose when her favorite song comes on, yelling to Chloe that this is their jam. She watches Chloe whisper something into Beca’s ear and judging by the look on Beca’s face, it’s something embarrassing. Emily doesn’t question it though, and continues to dance and sing along to David Guetta with the rest of the girls.

The Trebles gatecrash around ten, already drunk from their own party, and Jesse runs in and sweeps Beca up in a bear hug. She screams and hits his shoulders and demands he puts her down, but she’s laughing and it’s the most carefree and _happy_ Beca that Emily has ever seen.

She takes selfies with the Bellas, and Beca happily photobombs, claiming that _she’s_ the birthday girl and she should be in _all_ the photos. It’s a new side of Beca that Emily has never seen before, so she grabs Beca’s hand and pulls her into a side hug and snaps a selfie of the two of them. Beca is smiling so wide that Emily is worried maybe she’s a little _too_ drunk, but then she’s yelling at Amy to get off of the counter before she falls and breaks her neck, and Emily’s worries quickly melt away.

It’s when Beca excuses herself after losing a game of beer pong to go to the bathroom that Emily rushes up to Stacie’s room - where she had hidden Beca’s present - and waits for Beca outside the bathroom door.

Beca’s singing quietly along to the muffled Fleetwood Mac song playing from downstairs when she comes out of the bathroom, and she jumps when she turns to see Emily standing with a gift in her hand.

“Jesus, Legacy, you scared the _crap_ out of me.”

“Sorry,” Emily whispers apologetically, but she’s drunk - thanks to Stacie’s jungle juice - and not as sincere as she hoped she would sound. Still, she holds the gift out to Beca, and Beca raises an eyebrow. “For you.”

“Um,” she takes the gift like it’s a ticking time bomb, and Emily rolls her eyes.

“It’s not gonna like, kill you, Beca.”

“Sorry, uh, thanks. You didn’t have to get me anything, you know, we don’t-usually we all just chip in for drinks or something when it’s one of our birthdays.”

“It’s okay, I wanted to.” She opens it slowly, and Emily bounces on the balls of her feet as she waits impatiently. At one point she whispers “come on” so quiet that she hopes Beca doesn’t hear it, but Beca looks up at her and smirks, and then rips the rest of the paper off.

“It’s, uh, a book?”

“A journal!”

Beca looks confused, turning the book around a few times before opening it, flicking through the empty pages.

“Em. Thanks.”

“I remember you said you get ideas for your mixes and you don’t always have your phone on you to write them down which means you forget them easily so I thought it’d help, maybe? I don’t, _uh_ , unless you don’t want it? I can take it back and just exchange it for a gift card or something, it’s-”

“-Jesus, Emily,” Beca laughs, looking up at her. “You talk way too fast.”

“Sorry.”

And then Beca smiles at her, holding the scrunched up ball of paper in one hand and her new journal in the other, and Emily feels like she can’t breathe.

“I love it, dude,” Beca says, “thank you.”

And maybe it’s the alcohol in her system but Emily swears she hears actual sincerity in Beca’s voice, and she can’t stop smiling, and then Beca is smiling and Emily doesn’t quite know what to do with herself. She opts for slowly reaching out to hug Beca, and she gives her a moment to push her away or tell her no, but Beca just rolls her eyes and smiles and accepts the hug.

She rests her chin on Beca’s head and breathes in and Beca smells like shampoo and a little bit like beer, but Emily closes her eyes and relaxes, and it might just be the best hug she’s ever received.

“Happy birthday, Beca.”

Beca whispers another thanks into her collarbone, gives her one last squeeze, and pulls back.

“Mayb-”

“-I’m just gonna,” Beca points a thumb behind her, in the direction of the door that leads to the attic room she shares with Amy, and then Emily is nodding, telling her _sure_ , she’ll see her downstairs, and she’s glad she likes her gift.

Later that night when Beca’s had more to drink and she hugs Emily again - for much longer than she had before outside of the bathroom - Emily tells herself that it’s because Beca is drunk and happy that she has the Bellas with her on her birthday. She tries not to focus on Beca’s breath on her neck and the feeling of her hands gripping her back, because if she does focus on that she knows that it’ll end badly for her heart.

/

The first person Emily fell in love with was a man named Mr Brown when she was six years old.

He was the mailman, and he was kind of old and smelled like a hardware store but he brought her gifts - at least, that’s what six year old Emily thought - and he always booped her on the nose when she answered the door with her dad standing behind her.

She’d accept the gifts - the pile of letters for her parents and a few for her older brother, and sometimes a small parcel every few weeks - and he’d tell her to have a great day, and she’d give him a high five before letting him go on to the next house.

Sometimes he’d magically pulled a flower out of nowhere and she’d thank him with an amazed smile and a hug. She told her mom one day that she wanted to marry him but her mom just laughed, and told her that she’s way too young to be thinking about anything like that.

She knows now that she wasn’t _actually_ in love with the mailman, but she’ll never forget the heartbreak she felt when her mom told her that he had passed away. She was only eight but it ripped through her like a freight train, and she still, to this day, thinks about him and how happy he was. She vowed to always be as happy and as kind as Mr Brown, and nineteen year old Emily still keeps that vow to this day.

The next person she fell in love with was when she was much older; a sophomore in high school. His name was Nicolás and she dated him for eight months before he broke up with her to be with Natalia Evans who was older and skinnier and had soft blonde hair and like, perfect tan skin.

To say it confused her when she fell in love with Natalia afterwards would be an understatement. She should hate the girl her boyfriend left her to be with but it turned out he left Natalia too, for someone who went to college and lived on her own, and Emily and Natalia soon became best friends.

Natalia helped her figure out that she liked girls, and she’ll forever be grateful to her for that, but nothing ever happened between them which, looking back, Emily regrets. Still, Emily liked Natalia. Like, really, _really_ liked her, so much that she was going to ask her to be her date for homecoming. But Natalia went with Stephanie, and Emily stayed at home eating ice cream and wondering when her life became a typical 90s heartbreak song.

She never told Natalia that she liked her - that she was falling in love with her - until junior year when senior-Natalia flat-out asked her if she had a crush on her. And Emily Junk can do a lot of things, but lying is not one of them. So she’d nodded and told her that she understands if she doesn’t like her that way and if she never wants to see her again, but Natalia had hugged her and told her it was okay. She told her that she was graduating this year and moving to Florida for college, and if it was any other time then maybe they could have made it work.

Maybe that hurt Emily much more than it would have if Natalia had cut her out of her life forever, because it reminded Emily that even though the world is cruel, people can be so kind, which she seemed to have forgotten over the couple of years that she was yearning for Nat to love her back.

She sometimes hates the stars for not aligning in her favor.

Still, the world carried on spinning and Emily carried on living, and just like the vow that she made when she was eight years old about being a kind person, she made another vow to not fall in love with anybody who didn’t love her back.

So naturally, when she found herself falling for Beca Mitchell halfway through her freshman year of college, Emily fell into that dark hole of yearning again, just like she did in high school. And the worst part of it all is that despite her vow, there was nothing Emily could do to stop it from happening.

/

Emily finds out a lot of things about Beca over the course of her freshman year.

She finds out that Beca prefers cats over dogs, she can’t use chopsticks no matter how hard she tries, she hates movies, the only thing she can cook is Cup Noodles and tomato soup, her favorite cereal is Rice Krispies, and she sometimes forgets to eat when she’s lost in her music.

Another thing Emily finds out one Friday evening when she’s doing her Psychology homework in the Bella house, while the rest of the Bellas are out partying, is that Beca is a loud crier.

She had no idea Beca was even in the house, so when she first hears a whimper coming from the bathroom, she wonders if it’s just her imagination playing with her. She knew watching all those Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural videos last night was a bad idea, because now she’s thinking every small sound that doesn’t come from herself or her phone is a ghost or a demon set out to kill her.

The second time she hears it, it’s much clearer, and sounds more like a sob, and she knows that the probability of it being any of the Bellas other than Beca is slim to none, because she watched everybody leave the house. She just assumed that Beca would be meeting them there or that she was spending her Friday night with Jesse; she’s not sure why it never crossed her mind that Beca was already home.

She hears the toilet flush, and then Beca descending the stairs and shuffling through the living room and into the kitchen, heading straight for the refrigerator where she then pulls out a tub of ice cream from the freezer that Emily _knows_ belongs to Amy.

(She knows it’s Amy’s because she had looked at the tub while she was getting herself some ice for her foot - because she’d stubbed her toe - and Amy had threatened to lock her in a room with Roger the kangaroo if she ever _thought_ about eating her ice cream.)

“Hi.”

The sound of a spoon dropping to the floor makes Emily wince as she watches Beca turn around, one hand clutching her heart as the other holds tightly onto the ice cream tub.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Emily!” she whisper-yells. “What is it with you and sneaking up on me?!”

“I’m sorry,” Emily stands up, making her way over to Beca and picking the spoon up off of the ground, holding it out to her. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Beca sighs, taking the spoon. Her eyes are red and her face is free of makeup and her hair is up in a messy bun, strands of hair sticking out from where, she presumes, Beca has been running her hand through it.

“Are you okay?”

Beca looks down, taking the lid off of the ice cream tub and placing it on the counter. She leans back against the counter and sighs again, using the back of her hand to wipe away the hair in front of her face.

“If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell Chloe?”

“Um,” Emily tugs her own sleeves over her hands, only just now noticing how cold it is in the kitchen. “Sure.”

“I’m like, interning right now and- man, music industry people suck. Internships _suck_.”

“You’re…interning?”

“Yeah. Started this year.” She digs her spoon into the ice cream and starts to stab at it distractingly. “You know Residual Heat?”

“Uh, no.”

“It’s a recording studio. They have like, companies all over the country. One in Barden, New York, L.A., Florida, I think.” Emily leans against the counter opposite Beca as she listens. “I was hoping I could show them my work and they’d like, let me help produce a track, you know. Snoop Dogg is currently recording a Christmas album there-”

“Wait, _the_ Snoop Dogg?”

Beca laughs. “Yeah. He’s like, so tall, dude.”

“Everyone is tall compared to-”

“-Shut up.” Beca turns around, opening the drawer behind her and pulling out another spoon. She gives it to Emily and then motions for her to follow her, so Emily does. “Anyway,” she sits down on the couch in the family room, patting the space beside her for Emily to sit down. “My boss, Sammy, he’s like- well first, he doesn’t even know my name. He calls me Reggie, and sometimes Regecca.”

“Is that even a real name?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried correcting him loads of times but at this point, I’ve just accepted that I have three names.”

Emily laughs, and Beca holds out the tub of ice cream towards her. Emily hesitates at first, worried that maybe Amy will find out and go through with her promise, but then Beca is nudging her with the cold tub, and she digs her spoon in and scoops it into her mouth.

“Yeah so like, he’s producing this album for Snoop Dogg but- _God_ , the dude has like, _no_ original ideas of his own. He gets everybody else to come up with shit and takes all the credit.”

“That’s s- crappy.”

“Right? Snoop was singing, um, Winter Wonderland-”

“-Oh, I love that song!-”

“-and,” Beca pauses, smiling at Emily’s outburst, before spooning more ice cream into her mouth, “thammy-” she swallows, “- _Sammy_ , sorry, needed more ideas, so I gave him an idea- I sang it, actually, over Snoop’s vocals, and Sammy actually liked it.”

“That’s awesome!”

Beca holds out the tub for Emily again. “Yeah, well, he wanted to hear more of my stuff so I gave him a flash drive and he- like, he didn’t even tell me what he thought until today when I actually _asked_ him if he’d listened to them and he _fucking_ forgot my name again even though I told him it yesterday and-” she cuts herself off with a sniffle and Emily looks up to see that she looks like she’s about to cry again.

“Oh,” she puts her hand out to rest on Beca’s knee, and at first she thinks Beca might push it off or feel uncomfortable, but instead she just carries on talking, voice thick and wavering. “He basically told me that I-that the fact that I can’t produce original content makes me useless and that-that even though my mashups are good, I won’t be able to like, _do_ anything with them and, _fuck_ ,” she stops rambling, sticking her spoon into the ice cream tub and wiping her eyes, and Emily squeezes gently on her knee.

“I’m sorry, Bec,” Emily whispers. She sticks her own spoon into the tub and then takes it from Beca, leaning over to place it on the coffee table in front of the couch. “If it’s any consolation,” she says, moving closer to Beca and taking her hand, “there are so many people on YouTube who create mashups who have like, millions of followers. You could easily do that and show Tommy that he’s wrong about you.”

“Sammy.”

“I know, but if he doesn’t call you by your name I won’t call him by his.”

Beca sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand and Emily wraps her arm around Beca’s shoulder and pulls her in, slowly enough to give Beca time to pull away if she doesn’t want to be hugged. But Beca just lets Emily pull her closer, resting her head on Emily’s chest.

“You could easily start a YouTube page and share your mixes with everyone. You know, there’s this artist called Girl Talk - uh, his name is Graham I think. Or maybe Gregg. Or George? I don’t know, but he has like, _loads_ of songs that are just mashups and um, I think that’s definitely copyright infringement but I don’t know, I’m not like, an expert on that stuff,” she pauses to catch her breath and also look down at Beca, and the angle causes her to lips to brush against Beca’s hairline.

She looks back up, closing her eyes.

“What I’m trying to like, _say_ , is that your mixes are like, the best thing ever.” she rubs her hand up Beca’s arm. “If some of the people on YouTube right now can get subscribers for doing crappy challenges or, uh, mediocre beauty tutorials, then you can definitely like, outsubscriber them.”

Beca chokes out a soft laugh. “That’s not a word, Em.”

“It is now,” Emily smiles to herself. “You could become YouTube famous and like, people already know you from the Bellas so you kind of already have a following and I know people in my classes that listen to some of the music that you listen to, so-”

“-Em.”

“Yeah?”

Beca looks up at her, and Emily slowly looks down, pulling her head back slightly when she sees how close their faces are. She feels like she stops breathing the whole time that Beca looks at her, which, admittedly, isn’t as long as she hopes.

“Could you, um,” Beca pauses when Emily instinctively reaches up to swipe her thumb underneath her eye, and even though it’s cool in the Bella house, Emily feels like she’s on fire. “Stop talking.”

“What?”

“ _Sorry_ , that sounded really rude, I just,” she laughs nervously and looks down, “I really appreciate you, um, trying to help me and-and cheer me up and stuff, but I just…”

“Right,” Emily nods. “I talk a lot, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s-” she looks back up, “you’re great. You’re _awesome_. I just don’t really know what I want to hear right now, and you, um, talking… it’s making it much harder to like, deal with it all, you know?”

Emily nods again, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Got it. Sorry.”

“Okay, you need to stop apologizing.”

“Sorry.”

Beca laughs, finally lowering her head to rest on Emily’s chest again. “ _Dude_.”

“Right. Sorr-mmm.”

“Thank you, though. You talk a lot but you’re pretty cool, I guess.”

Emily smiles. When she looks down and her lips graze Beca’s forehead again, this time she doesn’t hesitate to press a soft kiss there.

/

Things seem to shift after that night. Emily thinks they become friends, like actual friends, who tell each other things.

Even though Emily is always spending time at the Bella house, and most of the time she ends up crashing on the couch, she still has her own dorm on campus which she spends most of the weekdays at. Because of this, Beca shows up at her door multiple times with ice cream, already ranting to Emily about her internship before Emily has the chance to invite her inside.

She complains about Sammy mostly. Emily still insists on calling him Tommy, which Beca catches onto and almost slips up one day, and she texts Emily telling her that she’s blaming her if she gets fired. She complains about Dax, and Frank, who always hits on her when she’s sitting at her desk trying to come up with ideas for Snoop Dogg’s album, and she complains about the fact that all she seems to be doing is fetching burritos and coffee and chips for the other employees and interns.

She complains until she cries, or gets angry, or ends up laughing at herself, and Emily listens and hangs onto every word she says.

One time, Beca falls asleep in Emily’s bed after a particularly stressful day, and Emily tries to focus on her homework and not the fact that Beca looks absolutely adorable in her bed.

They quickly form a routine, and after a while, Emily knows that Chloe starts to get suspicious that Beca is hardly ever at the Bella house anymore. At first Chloe thinks she’s spending time with Jesse, but he tells her that he has no idea where Beca is half of the time, and Emily overhears Chloe telling Stacie that she’s starting to worry that Beca is hanging around with the wrong people.

Still, she accepts that this is Beca’s secret, so she keeps her mouth shut, and doesn’t correct Chloe when Chloe rants to her one day about Beca distancing herself because she’s got like, a deadly illness or something.

Emily just listens to Chloe and nods and hums and chimes in whenever words are needed, and Chloe thanks her with a gentle smile and a kiss to the cheek.

That’s the problem with being a people person, Emily thinks. Everyone wants you to listen to their problems. Which, she’s not complaining about. She likes being friends with these girls and helping them out, and if that means listening to their problems, she’ll do it, no questions asked.

/

Emily throws herself into her music to distract herself from Beca.

She writes more songs in her freshman year than she ever has in her life. She keeps them hidden away in journals in the bottom of her closet, because they’re cheesy and if Beca finds them, she’ll never let her live it down.

She’s not sure Beca will ever figure out, if she does find them, that they’re about her, but she wants to be safe just in case.

She writes different pieces of herself into her songs every time she spends time with Beca, until eventually she’s living and breathing the lyrics that she hopes one day she’ll find the courage to sing to her.

/

 _“You get under my skin,_  
_More than anyone's ever been._  
_But when we lay in bed,_ _  
_ You hold me harder till I forget.”

Her first fight with Beca is about something stupid that Emily can’t remember.

She remembers telling Beca that she’s infuriating and that she _never_ listens, and she remembers Beca laughing at her, which just annoyed her even more.

She remembers Beca leaving and coming back with Taco Bell, and the two of them lying in Emily’s bed together while watching Netflix - Beca’s arm wrapped tightly around Emily as they both drifted off to sleep.

/

 _“You know just how to make,_  
_My heart beat faster._  
_Emotional earthquake,_ _  
_ Bring on disaster.”

It’s Jessica’s birthday and they’re drunk.

They’re sitting together on the steps at the front of the Bellas house sharing a bottle of wine, and Beca is teasing Emily about how she’s going to get arrested for underage drinking. Emily nudges Beca’s shoulder and Beca topples over slightly, only to come back closer than she was before.

The feeling of Beca’s bare arm against hers has her heart pounding in her chest, and she knows these are all red flags but she doesn’t really care at this point. Beca rests her head on her shoulder, kisses her skin, and all Emily can do is fall harder.

/

 _“And I wanna get drunk with you,_  
_When we lie so still, but you're taking me places._  
_Holding me onto you,_ _  
_ And we don't care who's watching us, baby.”

The first time they get drunk on their own is during a storm.

Emily refuses to let Beca go back to the Bella house so they share the bottle of Champagne that Emily had asked her mom to buy specifically for Chloe’s birthday.

“We’ll buy her a new bottle, it’ll be fine,” Beca says.

They get to know each other more and Emily has to resist the urge to kiss Beca when they’re lying together in bed. She watches her instead, falling into a deep, drunken sleep, and rolls over to rest her head on Beca’s chest.

She falls asleep to the sound of Beca’s heart thudding in her chest, and she thinks, maybe, Beca might feel the same way she does.

/

It’s a few weeks before the Bellas graduate when Beca brings up why she doesn’t want to tell Chloe about the internship.

“She’s like, this _amazing_ person, and I don’t want her thinking that I can’t handle this, you know?”

“Wait, what?”

Beca sits up from where she had her head resting in Emily’s lap, and crosses her legs as she starts to fiddle with a loose string on one of Emily’s comforters.

“I know Chloe is like, a mess sometimes, but she’s,” Beca huffs out a breath, “I don’t know dude, she’s like- she’s something else. Something that I can’t, like, keep up with. I’m not good enough for that. For her.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Chloe knows that I can’t keep up with school and an internship, she’ll like- she’ll probably think that I won’t be able to juggle a job and a relationship when we graduate.”

Emily’s heart sinks, and she tries to not let the heartbreak show on her face.

“You and Chloe are in a relationship?”

Beca looks up, “what? No way, I _wish_. Wait, not like that-I don’t, uh…” She clenches her jaw and swallows, and Emily tilts her head to the side, frowning. “Ah, shit.”

“You like her.”

“Um,” Beca looks down, laughing nervously. “Yeah, we-I mean, like, how can you _not_ , right? She’s _Chloe_.”

Emily’s lungs threaten to burst and her heart feels like it cracks straight down the middle, and she’s smiling, nodding, tapping a beat on her leg. “Yeah, she’s pretty awesome.”

“Yeah.” Beca looks embarrassed, like she doesn’t want to be there anymore, and Emily reaches a hand out to stop Beca’s trembling hands.

“You should like, ask her out.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Beca smirks. “She doesn’t-Chloe would _never_ -”

“-Beca, come on. You’re like, the best. You’re so talented that I-like, I _wish_ I could do what you do.” Beca presses her lips together to stop herself from smiling, and Emily pulls her hand away from Beca’s. “I think she likes you too, you know.”

“Really?”

Emily nods, clenching her jaw as she looks down. She focuses on breathing properly for a few seconds, until she looks up to see Beca looking like she’s seen a ghost.

“Em,” she whispers, and the softness of her voice makes Emily hyper-aware of the fact that she has tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat, and it’s too late to excuse herself because Beca knows. “Hey,” she reaches out, and Emily can’t deal with being touched right now so she pulls her arm away, standing up and walking over to the laptop on her desk.

“Glass Animals or Metric?”

“Emily.”

She opens Spotify and clicks onto the search bar. “Metric, it is.”

She doesn’t even realize Beca is next to her until she feels a hand on her arm and it feels like she’s being burned. It makes her jump slightly and then Beca is putting her hand on her shoulder and turning her towards her and it’s too much.

“Beca, don’t-”

“-You’re crying.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“C’mon, man.” Beca’s hands are on her cheeks and everything is moving too fast and too slow at the same time, and Emily can’t see anything because of her tears and Beca is cupping her face and standing on her tiptoes and she feels like she can’t breathe.

She shudders when Beca softly presses the pads of her thumbs under her eyes, wiping her tears away, and her hands latch onto her shoulders like a lifeline, and it reminds her of the day Nicolás broke up with her in sophomore year. Only this feels so much worse.

“Emily, what’s going on?”

It’s the concern and softness in her voice that has Emily crying harder, and she collapses into Beca when she wraps her arms around her shoulders. She knows she’s staining Beca’s shirt with tears and if it was any other day, she’d be scared to show Beca this side of her, but right now, she’s not sure she cares.

Because once again, the person she loves, loves somebody else.

“Emily,” Beca whispers into her neck. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She mumbles a “no”, and Beca pulls back, cupping her face.

“Look at me. Em, look at me.” When she does lock eyes with Beca, she feels her whole world collapsing around her, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. “Tell me wh-”

She moves her head forward, pressing her lips against Beca’s, and Beca pulls back, her hands dropping to rest on Emily’s shoulders.

“Wh- wha-”

“-I love you.”

She tilts her head in a way that, if it was any other day but today, Emily would think is adorable. But all she can do is squeeze her eyes shut and try not to choke out a sob when Beca lets go of her shoulders and takes a step back.

“I, um… what?” When Emily opens her eyes, Beca’s eyebrows are knitted together in confusion and she’s wringing her hands, blinking rapidly. “You…”

“I love you.”

“Like, you, um, like I’m your friend? Like, you love me as a friend?”

Emily chokes out a laugh because of _course_ , Beca would be oblivious about this, even after she kissed her. Just like she’s oblivious about how she’s acted around her the whole year. How she looks at her and talks about her, and how much happier Emily is when they’re together.

Just like she’s oblivious to how Chloe feels about her, too.

“No, Beca.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand, I didn’t think you were… _into_ girls. Like that.”

“That doesn’t...” Emily runs a hand through her hair and walks to the other side of her dorm room, needing to put some distance between them. “That doesn’t _matter._ ”

“Um. Emily, I’m… I’m flattered, I really am, but- _dude_ , you’re my best friend, I don’t- wh- I, uh,” she puffs out a breath of air and Emily turns to look at her, eyes full of tears and her lip trembling as she tries to swallow the lump in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” Emily whispers. “I didn’t like, plan on telling you. Like, ever. I don’t know what just happened.” She sighs. “Can we like, forget that I did that and just- just go back to whatever we were talking about before?”

Beca’s eyes narrow and then she frowns, shaking her head. “Dude,” she laughs, but it’s not the type of laugh that Emily fell in love with. It’s bitter and confused and a little sympathetic. “I’m not… that’s not fair. To you. I can’t just forget that- Em, you said you _love_ me.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Come _on_ , that’s…” she sucks in a breath. “I wish I _could_ , like, forget or even uh, like- I wish I felt the same, I do, but-”

“-But you like Chloe.”

“I don’t-uh, I… I love her. I’ve loved her for four years.”

Emily is nodding, pursing her lips and digging her fingernails so hard into her palm that she knows she’s leaving indentations, but the pain is nothing compared to the feeling of Beca rejecting her.

“I’m sorry that I um, ruined the night.” Emily’s voice is hoarse from crying and she clears her throat to help alleviate the pain but it doesn’t help, and she doesn’t know what to do.

“You didn’t.” Beca walks over to her and places a hand on her arm and Emily breathes out a heavy sigh, using her sleeve to wipe her eyes. “You don’t need to apologize.”

“Can you like, stop being so nice to me?” Beca lets out a soft laugh, and then her hand is on Emily’s shoulder and she’s pulling her in for a hug again, and it feels like a goodbye that Emily isn’t ready for. “I…”

“You what?”

Beca’s scent will haunt her for years and she knows it, but she breathes in anyway, accepting the finality of it all, and she lets out a shuddering breath.

“I really hope Chloe feels the same way about you.” Beca pulls back, smiling softly at her. It feels different and new, but Emily can see the sympathy in her eyes and she pulls back, sniffling a few more times before crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you think you could, um, give me like… some time?

“Time?”

“Yeah, to just like, um- to process… things. And to feel like, okay again.”

“Right,” Beca nods. “Of course, I, um…” she trails off, turning around to pick up her jacket from where she’d draped it over the edge of Emily’s bed over an hour ago when she arrived. “I’m,” she puts her jacket on and makes her way past Emily and towards the door, “sorry, again. I’m really- I really am s-”

“-I know,” Emily interrupts, smiling. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

“Right, um,” Beca turns to leave but then stops halfway out of the door, opening her mouth to say something. Emily watches, holding her breath, but Beca doesn’t speak, instead opting to shoot her one last smile before shutting the door behind her.

If Emily drops onto her bed and cries herself to sleep that night, she’ll never admit it.

She’s never been able to understand Beca Mitchell, and she’s not sure she’ll ever get chance to.


End file.
